A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. Poll released Tuesday says that roughly one in four Americans said they sympathize more with the Confederacy than with the Union, a figure that rises to nearly four in 10 among white Southerners.

When asked the reason behind the Civil War, whether it was fought over slavery or states' rights, 52 percent of all Americans said that the leaders of the Confederacy seceded to keep slavery legal in their state, but a sizable 42 percent minority said that slavery was not the main reason those states seceded.

"The results of that question show that there are still racial, political and geographic divisions over the Civil War that still exists a century and a half later," CNN Polling Director Holland Keating said.

When the results were broken down by political party, most Democrats said that Southern states seceded over slavery, independents were split and most Republicans said that slavery was not the main reason Confederate states left the Union.

Is this information supposed to be surprising? Ray Charles could have seen the outcome of this poll from the grave. This country is divided over many things, including the Civil War. This is the only country that celebrates a war that was lost and reveres its leaders who failed. Civil War remembrances and re-enactments are misrepresentations of what the Civil War was about, and most completely fail to represent the existence of slavery at all. Show the Middle Passage or how slaves were actually treated, and the numbers might change. Probably not, but maybe.

Many people don't care that blacks are made to revisit our oppression constantly through activities that keep the Civil War fresh in the minds of the public — activities that fail to recognize our existence, yet still deify those who would wipe us from existence. Call us crazy, but constantly reminding people of a time when they were considered two-thirds human and had no civil or human rights — and whose only value was free labor for a country that denied them the benefits of that labor for at least a century and a half — will probably continue to divide people.

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No, we're not surprised at the findings. We are surprised that folks are acting as if they are surprised by these findings.